


Teeth of a Dragon

by SadinaSaphrite



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Blackwatch Genji is ANGRY, Gen, Genji Joins Blackwatch, Mentions of Violence, Mild Language, Vague mention of dismemberment
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-07-28
Updated: 2017-07-28
Packaged: 2018-12-08 00:43:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,771
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11635380
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SadinaSaphrite/pseuds/SadinaSaphrite
Summary: Gabriel pays the new kid Genji a visit after Overwatch finds him half dead in the home of his own clan. Overwatch has a plan for him, but Gabe has other ideas.Part of Blackwatch Week 2017: Recovery.





	Teeth of a Dragon

Genji wondered how it would have played out if things had been different. If he had been different. If he had paid attention to the whispers about his father’s unexpected death, would he be lying in a hospital bed, staring at the same ceiling day after day? If he had heeded the warnings (threats?) of the clan elders, would he be listening to the steady beep of a monitor, reminding him that his every heartbeat was only possible due to a machine? If he had listened, just once to his brother, would he be here, a thousand miles away from home, drowning in the knowledge that his clan, his _family_ thought he was so worthless, so shameful, that it would be more honorable for him to die than to be himself? 

Dr. Ziegler had saved his life, even though at the time he wasn’t sure he had wanted anyone to save him. The agony of betrayal was worse than pain in his chest or the sight of his severed arm lying across the room, and death would have been, ironically, a Mercy. He was listless, without purpose, numb, empty but for the pain and regret in his body and his soul.

That was how Commander Reyes had found him when he walked into his hospital room and made him the offer. 

“Hey, kid,” He stood at the foot of the hospital bed, thick arms folded over his chest. 

Genji didn’t respond, eyes staring at the off-white ceiling, listening to the soft hisses of the ventilator covering the bottom half of his face, assisting his damaged lungs. His prototype body wasn’t much of a body at all, more of a glorified life-support machine, and the constant beeps and whirrs only emphasized how much he had lost. 

“Kid,” Reyes tried again. “Commander Gabriel Reyes. I’m here to talk.”

Genji continued to ignore the man, staring 

“Angela told me you speak English. No use playing dumb.”

“I am not playing at anything,” Genji replied in accented English, his voice muffled slightly by the respirator. “I simply do not wish to speak with you.”

“You don’t even know what I have to say,” he said, and Genji could hear the smirk in the man’s voice. 

“You have nothing that I want to hear.” He turned his head away. “I wish to be alone with my thoughts and the shadow inside my soul.” He anticipated pity, empty reassurances, or bland comfort, like all the nurses had offered him already. What he didn’t expect was for Reyes to burst into laughter, and it startled Genji enough that he looked over at the man. He was standing at the foot of Genji’s hospital bed, arms folded across his broad chest, head thrown back in laughter. His laugh was loud and sharp with an edge to it, perhaps mockery, perhaps something else. 

“‘The shadow inside my soul?’ Are you shitting me? How pathetic is that?”

“H-hey!” Something within stirred within the fog of apathy Genji had surrounded himself with. “Stop that!”

“You’ve been here for what, three weeks? And you’ve really spent all this time staring at nothing and just thinking about how miserable you are? Do you have sad music to keep you company? Do you need me to get a pen and paper so you can write about the torture you feel inside your soul? Oh God, do you write poetry? Bad poetry?”

“Get out, or I’ll have you removed!” Genji snapped.

“Hah!” Reyes smirked at him. “I’d love to see a little shit like you try to do anything while you’re literally only half a kid.”

Something inside Genji cracked. His eyes blazed above his mask and he sat up as best he could, straining against the machinery. “You know nothing about me! You do not know what I am capable of! I am an assassin, a ninja of the most dangerous crime syndicate in Japan! In all of Asia!” He saw Reyes raise a bushy eyebrow skeptically and it was enough to keep Genji’s mouth rolling with the momentum he’d gathered. “You have no idea what I have been through! My clan turned their back on me and my own family tried to murder me! I am a Dragon of the Shimada and I will not be treated like a child by the likes of you! Saving my life does not give you the right to mock me, and giving me this flimsy body does not indebt me to you! If you have something of value to say, then say it, otherwise get out and leave me in peace!” Genji was breathing hard by the time he finished, his face red behind the mask and respirator hissing and whirring as it kept up with his respiratory rate.

Reyes let out a low whistle and clapped slowly, the mocking smirk gone from his face. There was still a gleam in his eye, but Genji thought it seemed less pointed. 

“So,” Reyes said. “The Dragon still has teeth. Good. After all the moping you’d been doing, I was wondering if your old clan had succeeded in putting you down.”

Genji’s good fist clenched. “…I still live.”

“Great,” Reyes grabbed a chair and pulled it alongside Genji’s bed, taking a seat. “Because I have a proposition for you.”

Genji narrowed his eyes. “I am listening, but skeptically.”

A grin flashed across Reyes’ face, and this time it wasn’t mocking at all. “Right now, Overwatch is planning on doing some further work on your body, make you functional again, try and weasel some information on the Shimada clan out of you, and then set you up somewhere nice and quiet where you can live out the rest of your days in peace and domestic drudgery.”

Genji felt his expression sour at the thought. Living the rest of his life in this barely functional body, tucked away in some witness protection program? He’d wither away from misery if the boredom didn’t get him first.

“Or,” Reyes continued. “We could offer you something a little more…exciting.”

Reyes sat back in the chair, eyes gleaming. Genji could tell the Commander was waiting for him to take the bait, and almost just let Reyes wait it out, but he really wanted to get on with this conversation. “…Exciting?”

“I can authorize some very specific modifications to your cybernetic body. Some modifications that would be ill suited to a civilian life.”

“…Like what?”

“Anything you want.”

“I don’t understand.” 

Reyes watched him with a half-smile tugging at his lips. “You were trained by the Shimada clan to be an assassin. A ninja. We can give you a body that surpasses anything a normal human can have. You want to run up walls and jump twenty feet in the air? Done. You want to have nightvision and infrared sensors in your eyes? Easy. You want to breathe fire and shoot shurikens out of your ass? You got it. Combined with your training, we can make you the best goddamn ninja to ever exist.”  
Genji stared at him, then looked slowly around himself, at the machines connected to what was left of his body, keeping him alive. “…You could make me more than…this?”

“Kid, we can make your body into a living weapon.”

Genji’s gaze returned to Reyes. “Seems generous.”

“It is.”

“Is there a catch?”

“Of course.”

Genji’s eyes narrowed sharply, making his scowl visible even from behind the respirator.

“In exchange,” Reyes continued, “you work for me. Join Blackwatch.”

“Blackwatch?” Genji asked, working to keep his tone neutral. He hadn’t heard of it. “I thought I had been saved by Overwatch.”

“Technically, yes. Blackwatch is the special ops division of Overwatch. The public doesn’t know about it. You’d report directly to me, not to Strike Commander Morrison.”

“What is it exactly that you do? What are you asking me to do?”

“We do what Overwatch doesn’t. What Overwatch can’t do under the scrutiny of the world and its politics. The dirty work that doesn’t look good on the headlines. We do what needs to be done when no one else can.”

Genji snorted. “It sounds like you want me to leave one criminal empire and join another.”

“Not quite,” Reyes said. “We do what we have to, politics be damned. But we do it to make the world a better place. We’re not running drugs and guns, like some gangs one of us has a connection to. We’re cleaning up. The dirty underbelly of world peace.”

The snide comment about gangs made something click in Genji’s mind. “You want me to tell you what I know about the Shimada-gumi.”

Reyes nodded. “I want you to tell me everything about them. Where they operate, who they work with, who their suppliers are, where their drops are, their factories, their holding facilities, who’s in charge, absolutely everything.” 

“And why would I tell you how to destroy my family?” He met Reyes’ eyes, but couldn’t match the conviction he saw there.

Reyes leaned forward, resting one hand on a knee. “Because I’m giving you the opportunity to personally be responsible for ending the Shimada criminal empire. Are you really going to protect the people, the family that betrayed you? With the resources in Blackwatch, we could give you the tools to tear apart the Shimada clan with your own two hands.” He glanced at Genji’s prosthetics. “Relatively speaking.”

Genji gave him a sharp glare and looked away, but the thoughts began running through his mind. Take down the Shimada clan? He hadn’t thought it possible. He hadn’t even considered it. His family had ties and resources all over the world. They were as deeply rooted and widespread as a cancer. But…with his knowledge and Overwatch’s resources, perhaps they could be poisoned from within. He thought of his father, dead under mysterious circumstances. He thought of the Clan Elders, who had berated and disciplined him over and over. He thought of Hanzo, standing over him with a sword in hand, eyes black and cold.

The fog of self-pity and apathy that had clouded him was pierced by a knife of rage. He held onto it, clung to the anger like a crutch, letting it wash over him, filling him until he shook with anger, suddenly feeling more alive than he had since Hanamura. He would bring about the end to his family’s criminal empire. He would destroy the Shimada clan and watch their empire fall into ruin. He would face his brother in battle and prove that revenge was best served on the tip of a blade. Genji looked up at Commander Reyes.

“I’m in.”


End file.
